The Clash Mauls a Teddy Bear and Plays Two Songs on The Tom Snyder Show (1981)

in Music, Television | December 9th, 2013

The Clash’s San­din­ista!, their fourth and penul­ti­mate stu­dio album (let’s not talk about Cut the Crap) inspired crit­i­cal rhap­sodies and rose to the top of lists every­where in 1981. When I encoun­tered it almost ten years lat­er as a young fan, I didn’t give it much of a chance, except for a song with the same name as my belea­guered hometown’s NBA team. In hind­sight, it was my loss, but it’s also true that near­ly every gen­er­a­tion of Clash fans, includ­ing the very first, has put their fin­ger on the band’s moment of either “sell­ing out” or sharply declin­ing. Maybe for me it was what a Rolling Stone review called San­din­ista!’s “main­stream moves” and “stu­dio sophis­ti­ca­tion.” Maybe it was the “whiff of grandeur” of the triple album. I think it also had to do with what Tom Sny­der, in his 1981 inter­view with the band above, says of them in his intro­duc­tion: they pre­ferred to be iden­ti­fied “not so much as a Rock and Roll group but as a ‘News-giv­ing group.’”

It was hard­ly news when I heard it, and I didn’t much care for top­i­cal songs any­way. But I’ve always admired Joe Strummer’s sin­cer­i­ty and sense of polit­i­cal urgency. I don’t know how seri­ous­ly Strum­mer takes Snyder’s “News-giv­ing” open, but he rolls with it, and the band turns on the charm offen­sive, alter­nate­ly cud­dling and abus­ing a ted­dy bear (against Snyder’s protes­ta­tions), pro­fess­ing their sin­cere loy­al­ty to their fans, and cov­er­ing the host with mer­chan­dise. It’s a fun eight and half min­utes. Then they do two songs, “The Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en” (above), from San­din­ista!, and “This is Radio Clash” (below), which doesn’t appear on any of their stu­dio albums. Behind Mick Jones’ wall of amps, pio­neer­ing graf­fi­ti artist Futu­ra 2000 spray-paints some uniden­ti­fi­able words, and beneath the whole affair is what Dan­ger­ous Minds calls “an under­cur­rent of con­trolled may­hem.” This kind of TV just doesn’t hap­pen any­more.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Audio Ammu­ni­tion: Google’s New Doc­u­men­tary Series on The Clash and Their Five Clas­sic Albums

Rare Live Footage Doc­u­ments The Clash From Their Raw Debut to the Career-Defin­ing Lon­don Call­ing

Mick Jones Plays Three Clas­sics by The Clash at the Pub­lic Library

The Clash: West­way to the World (The 2002 Gram­my Win­ning Film)

The Clash Live in Tokyo, 1982: Watch the Com­plete Con­cert

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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View Bill Gates’ Mobile Library: The Books & Courses That Help Him Change The World

in Books, Education | December 9th, 2013

Step­ping down as Microsoft’s chief exec­u­tive offi­cer in 2000 had giv­en Bill Gates some extra time, which the auto­di­dact imme­di­ate­ly expend­ed by attempt­ing to learn… well, every­thing. Per­haps Gates threw him­self at learn­ing to make up for aban­don­ing col­lege for greater pursuits—he attend­ed Har­vard but left after two years’ study to pur­sue his pas­sion for com­put­ers. What­ev­er his rea­sons, Gates has begun to assid­u­ous­ly learn all he can about the world, and is record­ing his edu­ca­tion process for pos­ter­i­ty on his web­site, The Gates Notes. As the video above explains, Microsoft’s founder has lis­tened to hun­dreds of hours of uni­ver­si­ty lec­tures from The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny; he got hooked after lis­ten­ing to Robert Whap­les’ Mod­ern Eco­nom­ic Issues and breez­ing through Tim­o­thy Tay­lor’s Amer­i­ca and the New Glob­al Econ­o­my. His num­ber one pick? Big His­to­ry which is taught by David Chris­t­ian and, Gates says, “is still my favorite course of all. The course is so broad that it syn­the­sizes the his­to­ry of every­thing includ­ing the sci­ences into one frame­work.”

Wher­ev­er Gates trav­els, he is also eter­nal­ly accom­pa­nied by his read­ing bag. Sur­prised that the her­ald of the dig­i­tal age is pack­ing paper­backs? Don’t be. “I’m still pret­ty much an old-school print guy,” Gates writes, “because I like to jot notes in the mar­gins, but I assume I’ll move over to ebooks when anno­ta­tion fea­tures get bet­ter.”

Last week, Gates showed WIRED the con­tents of his decid­ed­ly 20th cen­tu­ry mobile library. The books, which Gates replen­ish­es at an impres­sive rate, encom­pass an admirable breadth of top­ics. As befit­ting the over­seer of the Bill and Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion, the major­i­ty of Gates’ read­ing con­sists of non-fic­tion (only Gary Shteyn­gart’s recent nov­el made the fic­tion cut this round). His­to­ry, psy­chol­o­gy, sci­ence, sound busi­ness coun­sel, soci­ol­o­gy, eco­nom­ics, and his­to­ry all make up the dizzy­ing array of Gates’ every­day read­ing. Here is a selec­tion from WIRED’s par­tial list, includ­ing Gates’ own com­ments on the impor­tance of each choice:

-Feynman’s Tips on Physics by Richard Feyn­man– A short com­pan­ion book to Richard Feynman’s clas­sic Lec­tures on Physics. Always worth­while to return to the feet of the mas­ter.

-Super Sad True Love Sto­ry: A Nov­el by Gary Shteyn­gart– I don’t read a lot of fic­tion, but I thought this was an inter­est­ing study of the moral impli­ca­tions of tech­nol­o­gy. Will tech­nol­o­gy con­tribute to everyone’s well-being or just make peo­ple more nar­cis­sis­tic?

-The Car­toon Intro­duc­tion to Sta­tis­tics by Grady Klein– Bought this to use with one of my kids. Help­ful in explain­ing a com­pli­cat­ed sub­ject to a teenag­er.

-The Path Between the Seas: The Cre­ation of the Pana­ma Canal by David McCul­lough – I read this to pre­pare for a fam­i­ly vaca­tion to Pana­ma. It’s pure McCul­lough: epic dra­ma, polit­i­cal intrigue, heart­break­ing defeats, and even­tu­al tri­umph.

-The Bet­ter Angels of Our Nature: Why Vio­lence Has Declined by Steven Pinker– One of the most impor­tant books I’ve read. Steven Pinker demon­strates how the world evolved to be far less vio­lent. Coun­ter­in­tu­itive, if you watch the news, but true.

We’ve also used the trusty Con­trol + Scroll func­tion to zoom in and name a few addi­tion­al titles:

An Uncer­tain Glo­ry: India and its Con­tra­dic­tions by Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen

Engi­neers of Vic­to­ry: The Prob­lem Solvers Who Turned The Tide in The Sec­ond World War by Paul Kennedy

The Price of Inequal­i­ty: How Today’s Divid­ed Soci­ety Endan­gers Our Future by Joseph Stiglitz

Why Does Col­lege Cost So Much? By Robert Archibald and David Feld­man

Mon­do Agnel­li: Fiat, Chrysler, and the Pow­er of a Dynasty by Jen­nifer Clark

How Chil­dren Suc­ceed: Grit, Curios­i­ty, and the Hid­den Pow­er of Char­ac­ter by Paul Tough

The One World School­house: Edu­ca­tion Reimag­ined by Salman Khan

Far From The Tree by Andrew Solomon

For the orig­i­nal list, head over to WIRED. For more of Gates’ com­men­tary, check out his site, The Gates Notes, here. You can also con­tin­ue your self-edu­ca­tion by vis­it­ing our lists of Free Online Cours­es, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Lan­guage Lessons, Free Text­books, and Free MOOCs.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

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Howard Zinn’s “What the Classroom Didn’t Teach Me About the American Empire”: An Illustrated Video Narrated by Viggo Mortensen

in Comics/Cartoons, History | December 9th, 2013

“Through­out U.S. his­to­ry, our mil­i­tary has been used not for moral pur­pos­es but to expand eco­nom­ic, polit­i­cal, and mil­i­tary pow­er,” says a car­toon Howard Zinn in Mike Konopacki’s 273-page com­ic book A People’s His­to­ry of Amer­i­can Empire. Writ­ten with Zinn and his­to­ri­an Paul Buh­le, the book adapts Zinn’s path­break­ing his­to­ry from below, A People’s His­to­ry of the Unit­ed States, and his auto­bi­og­ra­phy You Can’t be Neu­tral on a Mov­ing Train in a direct exam­i­na­tion of the U.S. Imperi­um. Konopac­ki calls the book his “answer” to the text­books of “the pow­er struc­ture.” (Explore high­lights from the com­ic his­to­ry here.)

Above, you can see a short video adap­ta­tion of some key text from A People’s His­to­ry of Amer­i­can Empire. Nar­rat­ed by Vig­go Mortensen, the video gives us a nut­shell ver­sion of Zinn’s cul­tur­al, polit­i­cal, and moral education—what the Ger­mans used to call bil­dung—as he grows from a some­what naive WWII bomber pilot, to a col­lege stu­dent on the G.I. Bill, to a grad­u­ate stu­dent, then pro­fes­sor, of his­to­ry.

Along the way he notices that the map in every text­book labeled “West­ern Expan­sion” shows “the march across the con­ti­nent as a nat­ur­al, almost bio­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non”:

That huge acqui­si­tion of land called the Louisiana Pur­chase gave no hint of any­thing but vacant land acquired, no sense that this ter­ri­to­ry was occu­pied by hun­dreds of Indi­an tribes that would have to be anni­hi­lat­ed or forced out of their homes in what we now call eth­nic cleans­ing.

Zinn goes on to chart the rise of U.S. Impe­ri­al­ism into the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry as the increas­ing­ly mil­i­ta­rized nation seizes Mex­i­can ter­ri­to­ry and invades Cuba and the Philip­pines. Then we come to the osten­si­bly anti-com­mu­nist “police actions” in Korea and Viet­nam, and Zinn’s high­ly influ­en­tial 1967 book Viet­nam: The Log­ic of With­draw­al. When entrust­ed by Daniel Ells­berg with hun­dreds of pages of the Pen­ta­gon Papers, Zinn learns that the war in Viet­nam is large­ly waged for the same rea­sons as our oth­er impe­ri­al­ist moves abroad: the papers “spoke blunt­ly of the U.S. motives as a quest for tin, rub­ber, oil.”

But what of the war Zinn begins with, the war in which he fought? Near the end of the short film, he returns to his days as a WWII bomber, when he heard a fel­low pilot argue that the U.S. was as “moti­vat­ed by ambi­tions of con­trol and con­quest” as its ene­mies. He dis­agreed at the time, but in the inter­ven­ing years came to see his fel­low airman’s point. What we get with our ide­al­ism about any war, Zinn says, is a seem­ing “Impe­ri­al­ism lite,” whose motives are benign. Soft pow­er, we’re told, wins the day now. But peel back the cur­tain on our actions in the world, and we will see the same atroc­i­ties, the same cru­el­ties, and the same basic moti­va­tions as every oth­er act of impe­ri­al­ist aggres­sion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Howard Zinn Dies at 87

Wel­come to the Plu­toc­ra­cy! Bill Moy­ers Presents the First Howard Zinn Lec­ture

Pulitzer Prize Win­ner Picks Essen­tial US His­to­ry Books

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Did Leonardo da Vinci Paint a First Mona Lisa Before The Mona Lisa?

in Art | December 9th, 2013

Leonar­do da Vin­ci’s Mona Lisa has been called “the best known, the most vis­it­ed, the most writ­ten about, the most sung about, the most par­o­died work of art in the world.” (Did you catch the Lego Mona Lisa that made the rounds on the web last week?) Com­plet­ed in the ear­ly 16th cen­tu­ry, the paint­ing offers a por­trait of Lisa Gher­ar­di­ni, wife of a Flo­ren­tine cloth mer­chant named Francesco del Gio­cond. (Hence why the paint­ing is some­times called La Gio­con­da or La Joconde.) Today, the Renais­sance mas­ter­piece hangs in the Lou­vre in Paris, where it’s vis­it­ed by an esti­mat­ed six mil­lion peo­ple each year.

There’s no short­age of debates sur­round­ing the Mona Lisa. Was it com­plet­ed in 1506? Or is 1517 a more accu­rate date? Does the por­trait actu­al­ly fea­ture Lisa Gher­ar­di­ni? (Most art his­to­ri­ans think so, but schol­ars have spec­u­lat­ed about oth­er fig­ures, includ­ing Leonar­do’s own moth­er, Cate­ri­na.) And then there’s this big­ger ques­tion. Was da Vin­ci’s Mona Lisa his first Mona Lisa? That debate starts with a tan­ta­liz­ing piece of text writ­ten by the artist/art his­to­ri­an Gior­gio Vasari in his 16th cen­tu­ry book, The Lives of the Most Excel­lent Painters, Sculp­tors, and Archi­tects. In a sec­tion called “Life of Leonar­do da Vin­ci: Painter and Sculp­tor of Flo­rence,” Vasari wrote: “Leonar­do under­took to exe­cute, for Francesco del Gio­con­do, the por­trait of Mon­na Lisa, his wife; and after toil­ing over it for four years, he left it unfin­ished.…” And then Vasari attrib­uted to the por­trait some char­ac­ter­is­tics that don’t quite line up with the famous paint­ing hang­ing in the Lou­vre today — “rosy and pearly tints,” eyes that had a “lus­tre and watery sheen which are always seen in life,” a nose “with its beau­ti­ful nos­trils, rosy and ten­der,” etc. All of this left some to won­der: Was Vasari talk­ing about anoth­er paint­ing? Per­haps an ear­li­er, unfin­ished ver­sion of the Mona Lisa?

Mona-Lisa-merge

Enter The Mona Lisa Foun­da­tion, a non-prof­it based in Switzer­land, that claims they’ve per­haps found an ear­li­er Mona Lisa. In an essay appear­ing on their web­site, and in a 20 minute video (top), the Foun­da­tion makes the case that “Isle­worth Mona Lisa” (right above) was prob­a­bly paint­ed by da Vin­ci around 1505, though nev­er com­plet­ed. Cen­turies lat­er the por­trait end­ed up in the hands of an Eng­lish col­lec­tor Hugh Blak­er, only to be then locked away in a Swiss vault for 40 years. It was final­ly brought out, and made avail­able to the pub­lic for the first time, in 2012.

Skep­tics have been quick to point out prob­lems with the “Isle­worth Mona Lisa.” Some note that it was paint­ed on can­vas, where­as Leonar­do typ­i­cal­ly paint­ed on wood. Oth­ers claim that x‑rays of the paint­ing call its authen­tic­i­ty into doubt. And then oth­ers sug­gest that the “Isle­worth Mona Lisa” is mere­ly a late 16th cen­tu­ry copy of the paint­ing now hang­ing in the Lou­vre. (The Mona Lisa Foun­da­tion web site doc­u­ments the skep­ti­cal claims and offers a rebut­tal for reach.)

To be sure, the Isle­worth Mona Lisa has its crit­ics, but it also has some sup­port­ers. In Sep­tem­ber 2012, the Swiss Fed­er­al Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy in Zurich car­ried out car­bon-dat­ing tests on the can­vas and con­firmed that it was like­ly man­u­fac­tured between 1410 and 1455, which helped refute claims that the paint­ing was a late 16th cen­tu­ry copy. Mean­while, John Asmus, a UCSD physics pro­fes­sor who “intro­duced the use of holog­ra­phy, lasers, ultra­son­ic imag­ing, dig­i­tal image pro­cess­ing, and nuclear mag­net­ic res­o­nance to art-con­ser­va­tion prac­tice,” car­ried out a brush­stroke analy­sis and con­clud­ed that “the same con­struc­tion prin­ci­ples” were used in the design of both Mona Lisas, increas­ing the like­li­hood that they were cre­at­ed by the same artist. And final­ly, Joe Mullins, a foren­sic spe­cial­ist trained at the FBI, “age regressed” the orig­i­nal Mona Lisa to see what she would have looked like at an ear­li­er point in time. His con­clu­sion? “Every­thing lined up per­fect­ly.” “This is Mona Lisa, two dif­fer­ent images at two dif­fer­ent times in her life.”

But still, skep­tics cer­tain­ly remain.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

NASA Sends Image of the Mona Lisa to the Moon and Back

Watch Leonar­do da Vinci’s Musi­cal Inven­tion, the Vio­la Organ­ista, Being Played for the Very First Time

The Anatom­i­cal Draw­ings of Renais­sance Man, Leonar­do da Vin­ci

What Leonar­do da Vin­ci Real­ly Looked Like

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The Pulp Fiction Archive: The Cheap, Thrilling Stories That Entertained a Generation of Readers (1896–1946)

in Archives, Art, Books, Comics/Cartoons, History | December 8th, 2013

Phantm_d

For the first half of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, pulp mag­a­zines were a quin­tes­sen­tial form of Amer­i­can enter­tain­ment. Print­ed on cheap, wood pulp paper, the “pulps” (as opposed to the “glossies” or “slicks,” such as The New York­er) had names like The Black Mask and Amaz­ing Sto­ries, and promised read­ers sup­pos­ed­ly true accounts of adven­ture, exploita­tion, hero­ism, and inge­nu­ity. Such out­lets offered a steady stream of work for sta­bles of fic­tion writ­ers, with con­tent rang­ing from short sto­ries about intre­pid explor­ers sav­ing damsels from Nazis/Communists (depend­ing on the pre­cise time of pub­li­ca­tion) to nov­el-length man vs. beast accounts of courage and cun­ning. This, inci­den­tal­ly, gave birth to the term “pulp fic­tion,” pop­u­lar­ized in the 1990s by Quentin Tarantino’s epony­mous film.

In the 1950s, the pulps went into a steep decline. In addi­tion to tele­vi­sion, paper­back nov­els, and com­ic books, the pulps were over­tak­en by the more explic­it, and even low­er brow men’s adven­ture mag­a­zines (read­ers of Tru­man Capote’s In Cold Blood may remem­ber Per­ry Smith, the socio­path­ic mis­fit who mur­dered the Clut­ter fam­i­ly, being an enthu­si­as­tic read­er of these ear­ly lads’ mags). Thanks to The Pulp Mag­a­zines Project, how­ev­er, many of the most famous pub­li­ca­tions remain acces­si­ble today through a well-designed online inter­face. Hun­dreds of issues have been archived in the data­base that spans from 1896 through to 1946. It includes large mag­a­zines, such as The Argosy and Adven­ture, and small­er, more spe­cial­ized fare, such as Air Won­der Sto­ries and Bas­ket­ball Sto­ries. Although good writ­ing occa­sion­al­ly made its way into the pulps, don’t expect these mag­a­zines to mir­ror the lit­er­ary depth of seri­al­ized pub­li­ca­tions of the 19th cen­tu­ry; rather, the archive pro­vides a ter­rif­i­cal­ly enter­tain­ing look at the pop­u­lar read­ing of ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca.

To browse the com­plete data­base, head over to The Pulp Mag­a­zines Project.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Gives Sneak Peek of Pulp Fic­tion to Jon Stew­art (1994)

Isaac Asi­mov Recalls the Gold­en Age of Sci­ence Fic­tion (1937–1950)

Did Shake­speare Write Pulp Fic­tion? (No, But If He Did, It’d Sound Like This)

Down­load 14 Great Sci-Fi Sto­ries by Philip K. Dick as Free Audio Books and Free eBooks

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“Get Data”: UCSD Neuroscience Grad Students Create Parody Video to Tune of Daft Punk’s ‘Get Lucky’

in Random, Science | December 8th, 2013

Last month, the UCSD Neu­ro­sciences Grad­u­ate Pro­gram held a lit­tle par­ty at a local bar, and the invi­ta­tion (above) came in the form of a video based on Daft Punk’s pop­u­lar video/song “Get Lucky” (below). Writes a local San Diego news­pa­per: “In sweet, fun­ny and saucy ways, [the video] shows the stress and mad­ness grad stu­dents go through in try­ing to come up with new data for sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies. The stu­dents released the video to coin­cide with this week’s Soci­ety of Neu­ro­science meet­ing at the San Diego Con­ven­tion Cen­ter.” Enjoy the clip and find more grad school odd­i­ties below.

via Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Phys­i­cal Attrac­tion: Mar­riage Pro­pos­al Comes in the Form of a Physics Paper

Grad­u­ate School Bar­bie: A New Gift Idea for The Demor­al­ized Grad Stu­dent in Your Life

The Illus­trat­ed Guide to a Ph.D.

Ser­i­al Entre­pre­neur Damon Horowitz Says “Quit Your Tech Job and Get a Ph.D. in the Human­i­ties”

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See John Steinbeck Deliver His Apocalyptic Nobel Prize Speech (1962)

in Literature | December 7th, 2013

John Stein­beck had the lit­er­ary voice of an Amer­i­can preach­er. Not a New Eng­land Calvin­ist, all cold rea­son­ing, nor a South­ern Pen­te­costal, all fiery feel­ing, but a Cal­i­for­nia cousin, the many gen­er­a­tions trav­el­ing west­ward hav­ing pro­duced in him both hunger and vision, so that grandios­i­ty is his nat­ur­al idiom, rest­less, unful­filled desire his nat­ur­al tone. His themes, cer­tain­ly Bib­li­cal; his char­ac­ters, salt of the earth trades­men, nomads, the lame and the halt. But his syn­tax always spoke of vast­ness, of a God-like uni­verse emp­tied of all gods. And so, when Stein­beck won the Nobel Prize in 1962, his speech rang of a human­ist ser­mon carved on stone tablets. (Above, as he reads, it’s hard not to see him as Vin­cent Price, a look he acquired in his final years.)

At times, I must admit, it’s not great. Or, rather, it’s a strange, uneven speech. Where Stein­beck the nov­el­ist is in full com­mand of his bom­bast, Stein­beck the speech­writer sounds at times like he pieced things togeth­er in his hotel room the night before with only his Gideon as a ref­er­ence. Ah, but Stein­beck at 4 in the morn­ing exceeds what most of us could do at any­time if asked to speak on such a sub­ject as “the nature and direc­tion of lit­er­a­ture,” which he says is cus­tom­ary for one in his posi­tion. Stein­beck decides to change the task and instead dis­cuss no less than “the high duties and respon­si­bil­i­ties of the mak­ers of lit­er­a­ture.” Per­haps a more man­age­able top­ic. He speaks of the writer’s mis­sion not as a priest­craft of words, but as a guardian­ship of some­thing even old­er, “as old as speech.” He invokes “the skalds, the bards, the writ­ers,” but of the priests who came lat­er, he has no kind words:

Lit­er­a­ture was not pro­mul­gat­ed by a pale and emas­cu­lat­ed crit­i­cal priest­hood singing their lita­nies in emp­ty churches—nor is it a game for the clois­tered elect, the tin-horn men­di­cants of low-calo­rie despair.

The crit­ic in me winces, but the read­er in me thrills. After a few clunk­ers in his open­ing (some­thing about a mouse and a lion), he has turned on the judg­ment, and it’s good. This is the Stein­beck we love, who makes us look through a god’s eye view tele­scope, then turns it around and shows us the oth­er end. Then it’s gone, the scale, the enor­mi­ty, the fan­tas­tic moral­i­ty play. He gets a lit­tle vague on Faulkn­er, men­tions some read­ing he’d just done on Alfred Nobel. And as you begin to sus­pect he’s going to tell us about his sum­mer vaca­tion, he erupts into a glo­ri­ous finale of ground­shak­ing fire­works wor­thy of com­par­i­son to the Nobel invention’s most fear­some cold war prog­e­ny.

Less than fifty years after [Nobel’s] death, the door of nature was unlocked and we were offered the dread­ful bur­den of choice. 



We have usurped many of the pow­ers we once ascribed to God. 



Fear­ful and unpre­pared, we have assumed lord­ship over the life or death of the whole world—of all liv­ing things. 



The dan­ger and the glo­ry and the choice rest final­ly in man. The test of his per­fectibil­i­ty is at hand. 



Hav­ing tak­en God­like pow­er, we must seek in our­selves for the respon­si­bil­i­ty and the wis­dom we once prayed some deity might have. 



Man him­self has become our great­est haz­ard and our only hope. 



So that today, St. John the apos­tle may well be para­phrased: In the end is the Word, and the Word is Man—and the Word is with Men.

I think St. John  would be proud of the vehi­cle, if not at all the tenor. But unlike John Stein­beck, he nev­er saw the war that gave us Auschwitz and Hiroshi­ma. Read the full text of Steinbeck’s speech at the Nobel Prize site here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Noth­ing Good Gets Away”: John Stein­beck Offers Love Advice in a Let­ter to His Son (1958)

William Faulkn­er Reads His Nobel Prize Speech

On His 100th Birth­day, Hear Albert Camus Deliv­er His Nobel Prize Accep­tance Speech (1957)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Turn Your Bike into an Electric Hybrid with MIT’s “Copenhagen Wheel”

in MIT, Sports, Technology | December 6th, 2013

Bonaverde’s “Roast-Grind-Brew Cof­fee Machine” seemed like one of the cool­er inven­tions I’ve recent­ly stum­bled upon. But then I came across this: The Copen­hagen Wheel. Orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed by researchers at MIT, the Copen­hagen Wheel “trans­forms ordi­nary bicy­cles quick­ly into hybrid e‑bikes.” It allows bike rid­ers to “cap­ture the ener­gy dis­si­pat­ed while cycling and brak­ing and save it for when you need a bit of a boost” — like climb­ing a hill in San Fran­cis­co. The wheel also feeds data to your iPhone, allow­ing you to mon­i­tor pol­lu­tion lev­els, traf­fic con­ges­tion, and road con­di­tions in real-time. After spend­ing sev­er­al years in devel­op­ment, the wheel can now be pre-ordered online and it will ship next spring. It retails for $699.

Get more back­ground infor­ma­tion on The Copen­hagen Wheel via this MIT web site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Design­ers of the Invis­i­ble Bike Hel­met Describe Their Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Prod­uct in Short Doc­u­men­tary

Sci­ence Behind the Bike: Four Videos from the Open Uni­ver­si­ty on the Eve of the Tour de France

Brus­sels Express: The Per­ils of Cycling in Europe’s Most Con­gest­ed City

David Byrne: From Talk­ing Heads Front­man to Lead­ing Urban Cyclist

The Physics of the Bike

 

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Join Clive James on His Classic Television Trips to Paris, LA, Tokyo, Rio, Cairo & Beyond

in Television, Travel | December 6th, 2013

After a morn­ing’s girl­watch­ing in Paris, Clive James goes for a leisure­ly yet har­row­ing dri­ve with Bon­jour Tristesse author Françoise Sagan at the wheel, walks out on the opera, pays respects to the graves of Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, and Mar­cel Proust, seeks the def­i­n­i­tion of a “fash­ion vic­tim,” denounces I.M. Pei’s pyra­mid atop the Lou­vre, and descends into the dance clubs beneath the streets. On the coast of Los Ange­les, he endures a celebri­ty-grade work­out, com­mis­sions a toupee from Bev­er­ly Hills styl­ist José Eber and his most trust­ed “hair unit” crafts­man, under­goes a plas­tic surgery con­sul­ta­tion, and meets the most cheer­ful (and no doubt most suc­cess­ful) car-park­er alive. At the height of Japan’s eco­nom­ic bub­ble, he does bat­tle with his own chop­sticks, los­es him­self in Shun­juku despite mean­ing to lose him­self in the Gin­za, beds down unsuc­cess­ful­ly in a love hotel, holds in his breath as he wedges him­self into a com­muter train, strug­gles to accept hos­pi­tal­i­ty from robots, puts him­self at the utter mer­cy of a game show, and gets drunk amidst junior geisha.

Why, you might ask, would a respect­ed man of let­ters like James – author, most recent­ly, of a new trans­la­tion of Dan­te’s Divine Com­e­dy — do all this prat­fall-inten­sive glo­be­trot­ting, much less on the BBC for all to see? I would sub­mit, as a long­time fol­low­er of the man’s work, that it has to do with his twin dri­ves to, with his wise­crack­ing­ly illu­mi­nat­ing turns of phrase, keep his audi­ences laugh­ing as well as think­ing, no mat­ter the medi­um in which he works. He fills the role of the enter­tain­er, cer­tain­ly, but simul­ta­ne­ous­ly fills the role of the intel­lec­tu­al. An untir­ing­ly curi­ous poly­glot, not that you’d know it by the exag­ger­at­ed inep­ti­tude with which he asks for direc­tions in Tokyo or inter­views French star­lets, James plays both low and high at all times, and you can see it in all these tele­vi­su­al jour­neys to Cairo, Rome, Mia­mi, Rio, Chica­go, Berlin, Shang­hai, New York, Bom­bay, Hong Kong, and even the Syd­ney of James’ native Aus­tralia. You can also see it in James’ trav­el pieces for the Observ­er that served as their tem­plates, all freely avail­able on his web site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pan Am’s 1960s and 70s Trav­el Films: Vis­it 11 Places, in 7 Lan­guages

Mashup Artist “Kuti­man” Trav­els to Tokyo and Cre­ates an Incred­i­ble Musi­cal Post­card

Five Cul­tur­al Tours of Los Ange­les

Al Jazeera Trav­el Show Explores World Cities Through Their Street Food

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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David Rees Presents a Primer on the Artisanal Craft of Pencil Sharpening

in Comedy, Creativity, Life | December 6th, 2013

How have you been sharp­en­ing your pen­cils? Regard­less of your answer, rest assured that you’re doing it wrong.

Lest there be any doubt that I’m geo­graph­i­cal­ly sit­u­at­ed smack dab in the mid­dle of for­mer car­toon­ist’s David Rees’ tar­get demo­graph­ic, I almost did­n’t click on the link to the pitch per­fect send up above because I believed it was real.

Here in non-Caribbean, non-South­east-Asian, non-Russ­ian, non-Mex­i­can Brooklyn—think Girls, the Jonathans Ames and Letham, brown­stone-dwelling movie stars and the very lat­est in n’est plus ultra strollers—it’s entire­ly plau­si­ble that a humor­less young arti­san might take to the Inter­net to teach us reg­u­lar schlubs How to Sharp­en Pen­cils.

Just wait ’til he brings out his leather strop. (Mis­placed yours? Look in your base­ment, or your grand­fa­ther’s tomb.)

Please note that though the video may be satir­i­cal, Rees makes actu­al mon­ey sharpening—and authen­ti­cat­ing—cus­tomers’ Num­ber Two pen­cils, using the same tech­niques demon­strat­ed in the video. (Sor­ry, hol­i­day shop­pers, as per his web­site, he won’t be tak­ing orders for his live pen­cil sharp­en­ing ser­vices until the New Year, but he does have a book out.)

Like you need any more excuse to whip out your knife, place it in your dom­i­nant hand, and start carv­ing.

To quote a cer­tain clas­sic Broad­way musi­cal, you got­ta have a gim­mick.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“The Peri­od­ic Table Table” — All The Ele­ments in Hand-Carved Wood

Watch The New Amer­i­ca, a Stop Motion Ani­ma­tion Star­ring 800+ Laser Engraved Wood Blocks

Learn to Draw Butts with Just Five Sim­ple Lines

Ayun Hal­l­i­day can get behind New Ork City pub­lic school teach­ers’ insis­tence on the Ticon­dero­ga brand. Fol­low her @AyunHallliday

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The World’s First “Roast-Grind-Brew” Coffee Machine Could Bring About a Coffee Revolution

in Food & Drink, Technology | December 6th, 2013

Bonaverde is “a small, ded­i­cat­ed team of young, sleep­less Berlin­er entre­pre­neurs that [have] made it their goal to rev­o­lu­tion­ize the cof­fee world.” How? By build­ing the world’s first “Roast-Grind-Brew Cof­fee Machine.” Oth­er machines might grind and brew the cof­fee. This one will roast the beans too, which is no triv­ial inno­va­tion. It promis­es to sig­nif­i­cant­ly decrease the num­ber of steps, and the amount of time, it takes to turn a har­vest­ed cof­fee bean into your morn­ing cup of joe, which means a much fresh­er cup of cof­fee. And per­haps a cheap­er one too.

Bonaverde has already devel­oped a pro­to­type. (See how it works below.) Now the ven­ture needs to bring the machine into pro­duc­tion. Through a Kick­starter cam­paign end­ing on Decem­ber 8th, the ven­ture ini­tial­ly hoped to raise $135,000. But it has already blown past that fig­ure, rais­ing $582,693 thus far. Any­one who con­tributes $250 (or more) to the cam­paign will get one of the very first Roast-Grind-Brew Cof­fee Machines, plus 6.6 lbs. (3kg) of green cof­fee. The­o­ret­i­cal­ly all you need to brew one very fresh cup of cof­fee. Find more infor­ma­tion on the next-gen­er­a­tion cof­fee machine over on Bonaverde’s Kick­starter page.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hon­oré de Balzac Writes About “The Plea­sures and Pains of Cof­fee,” and His Epic Cof­fee Addic­tion

“The Vertue of the COFFEE Drink”: London’s First Cafe Cre­ates Ad for Cof­fee in the 1650s

The His­to­ry of Cof­fee and How It Trans­formed Our World

How Cli­mate Change Is Threat­en­ing Your Dai­ly Cup of Cof­fee

A Short, Ani­mat­ed Look at What’s Inside Your Aver­age Cup of Cof­fee

Black Cof­fee: Doc­u­men­tary Cov­ers the His­to­ry, Pol­i­tics & Eco­nom­ics of the “Most Wide­ly Tak­en Legal Drug”

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